B'reishit 2020 - Genesis 2:4-24 - 2020

Chapter 2 is not another creation story. As such it would be singularly incomplete. In fact, it presupposes a knowledge of much of the preceding account of Creation. Many of the leading ideas in the earlier account are here reiterated, though the mode of presentation is different. Thus, in both narratives God is the sovereign Creator, and the world is the purposeful product of His will. To human beings, the crown of His Creation, God grants mastery over the animal kingdom. In chapter 1, this idea is formulated explicitly; in the present section it is inferred from the power of naming invested in man. Both accounts view man as a social creature. Both project the concept of a common ancestry for all humanity. The notion that the human race was originally vegetarian is implied in as in 1:29. Finally, one of the most serious questions to which the present narrative addresses itself—the origin of evil—would be unintelligible without the fundamental postulate of the preceding cosmology, repeated there seven times: the essential goodness of the divine creation.

The startling contrast between this vision of God's ideal world and the world of human experience requires explanation. How did the pristine harmony between God, man, and nature come to be disturbed? How are we to explain the harsh, hostile workings of nature, the recalcitrance of the soil to man's arduous labors? If God ordered man and woman to procreate, why then does woman suffer the pangs of childbirth in fulfilling God's will? If God created the human body, why does nudity in the presence of others instinctively evoke embarrassment? In short, how is the existence of evil to be accounted for?

The biblical answer to this fundamental question, diametrically opposed to prevalent pagan conceptions, is that there is no inherent, primordial evil at work in the world. The source of evil is not metaphysical but moral. Evil is not transhistorical but humanly wrought. Human beings possess free will, but free will is beneficial only insofar as its exercise is in accordance with divine will. Free will and the need for restraint on the liberties of action inevitably generate temptation and the agony of choosing, which only man's self-mastery can resolve satisfactorily. The ensuing narrative demonstrates that abuse of the power of choice makes disaster inescapable. -Sarna, JPS Torah Commentary

The most important of God's Names is the four-letter Name represented by the Hebrew letters Yod-Heh-Vav-Heh (YHVH). It is often referred to as the Ineffable Name, the Unutterable Name or the Distinctive Name. Linguistically, it is related to the Hebrew root Heh-Yod-Heh (to be), and reflects the fact that God's existence is eternal. In scripture, this Name is used when discussing God's relation with human beings, and when emphasizing his qualities of lovingkindness and mercy. It is frequently shortened to Yah (Yod-Heh), Yahu or Yeho (Yod-Heh-Vav), especially when used in combination with names or phrases, as in Yehoshua (Joshua, meaning "the Lord is my Salvation"), Eliyahu (Elijah, meaning "my God is the Lord"), and Halleluyah ("praise the Lord").

The first Name used for God in scripture is Elohim. In form, the word is a masculine plural of a word that looks feminine in the singular (Eloha). The same word (or, according to Maimonides, a homonym of it) is used to refer to princes, judges, other gods, and other powerful beings. This Name is used in scripture when emphasizing God's might, His creative power, and his attributes of justice and rulership. Variations on this name include El, Eloha, Elohai (my God) and Elohaynu (our God). -Jewish Virtual Library

While God the Creator was the primary subject of the previous chapter, the focus of attention now shifts to humankind. This change in perspective and emphasis is signaled by the inversion of the regular sequence "heaven and earth" in the opening sentence. The almost unique expression "earth and heaven" suggests pride of place for terrestrial affairs. Information about the physical world is offered only to provide essential background for the understanding of the narrative, which seeks to explain the nature of man and the human condition. -Sarna, JPS Torah Commentary

Nothing was said in 1:27 of the substance from which man was created. Here it is given as "dust," a word that can be used synonymously with "clay.” The verb "formed" (Heb. va-yitser) is frequently used of the action of a potter (yotser), so that man's creation is portrayed in terms of God molding the clayey soil into shape and then animating it. This image is widespread in the ancient world. In Egyptian art the god Khnum is shown before a potter's wheel busily fashioning man, and in the Wisdom of Amen-em-opert (chap. 35) it is stated that "man is clay and straw, and the god is his builder," Mesopotamian texts, in particular, repeatedly feature this notion. The same is found in the Greek myth about Prometheus, who created a man, and about Hephaestus, who molded the archetypal woman Pandora from earth. -Sarna, JPS Torah Commentary

נשמת חיים, “an immortal soul,” surviving the death of the body it inhabits. -Chizkuni

ויפח באפיו נשמת חימם, “He blew into his nostrils a living soul.” G-d personally blew the breath of life into the human being, something He had not done for any of His other creatures. Why was all this necessary? This was in order to enable man to have the wisdom, i.e. holy spirit, to enable him when viewing all the animals to name them correctly after having discerned how each was different from the other. -Chizkuni

Ancient Near Eastern literature provides no parallel to our Eden narrative as a whole, but there are some suggestions of certain aspects of the biblical Eden. The Sumerian myth about Enki and Ninhursag tells of an idyllic island of Dilmun, now almost certainly identified with the modern island of Bahrein in the Persian Gulf. -Sarna, JPS Torah Commentary

the tree of knowledge of good and bad. The interpretation of this enigmatic designation, which is unparalleled anywhere outside the present narrative, hinges upon the definition of "knowledge" and the scope of "good and bad." Ibn Ezra, followed by many moderns, understood carnal knowledge to be intended since the first human experience after eating the forbidden fruit is the consciousness of nudity accompanied by shame; moreover, immediately after the expulsion from Eden it is said, "Now the man knew his wife Eve,"

Against this interpretation is the fact that at this stage woman is not yet created, that sexual differentiation is made by God Himself (cf. x: 27), that the institution of marriage is looked upon in verse 25 as part of the divinely ordained order, and that, according to 22, "knowledge of good and bad" is a divine characteristic. Thus, it will not do to take "good and bad" as the human capacity for moral discernment. Aside from the difficulty of understanding why God should be opposed to this, there is the additional argument that a divine prohibition would be meaningless if man did not already possess this faculty. Indeed, from 3:3 it is clear that the woman knows the meaning of disobedience; that is, she is already alert to the difference between right and wrong, which can have no other meaning than obedience or otherwise.

It is more satisfactory, however, to understand "good and bad" as undifferentiated parts of a totality, a merism meaning "everything." True, man and woman do not become endowed with omniscience after partaking of the fill it, but the text does seem to imply that their intellectual horizons are immeasurably expanded. Passages like 2 Samuel 14:17, 20 lend support to this interpretation. It should also be noted that "good and bad," exactly in the Hebrew form used here (tov va-ra), occurs again only in Deuteronomy 1:39: "Moreover, your little ones who you said would be carried off, your children who do not yet know good from bad..." There the context leaves no doubt that not to know good and bad means to be innocent, not to have attained the age of responsibility. In the present passage, then, it is best to understand "knowledge of good and bad" as the capacity to make independent judgments concerning human welfare. -Sarna, JPS Torah Commentary

Order Versus Chaos in the Human Soul

God has gone as far as He can with His Creation. He has brought order out of chaos and established a balanced ecosystem in which to house humanity. With the "building" of woman, Gods creation is complete. He is now dependent on the humans, whom He has created in His own image, to till His garden and preserve His creation.

Like a Persian miniature, the Garden of Eden is a perfect closed system where all the elements are arrayed in artful relation to one another: the plants grouped around the trees of life and knowledge, a host of vegetarian beasts encircling man and woman, who sit side by side at the center of this tableau. For a fleeting moment, God can enjoy His peaceable kingdom. But what will happen when humans take control over their own destiny?

The first test of this closed system comes with Gods command not to eat of the tree of knowledge. Will humans prove obedient, and the system stable? Or will chaos reassert itself in the form of human free will? God understands that He has endowed humans with the capacity to defy Him—otherwise He would not have warned of the consequences of disobedience. But what is God's intent for His garden-keepers? Does He want them to remain blissfully ignorant and perpetually childlike? Or is He using this temptation to nudge them, like a mother bird, to venture forth from their secure nest?

To me this ambivalence mirrors all parents' mixed emotions about their children's development. On one hand, we instinctively want to preserve our children's innocence for as long as possible, to protect them from the knowledge of good and evil in the world, from the complex passions of adult sexuality, and from the consciousness of their own mortality. But we also know that our job as parents is to prepare our young to face the challenges of adult life on their own. The paradox is that if we succeed in our job as good parents, the children we love so much will have acquired the independence to leave us when they become adults.

As the first “parent" in Genesis, God serves as a helpful role model for striking a balance between the extremes of child-rearing: between discipline and permissiveness; between asserting control and letting go, between unconditional love and clearly stated expectations. -Rosenblatt, Wrestling with Angels

כי ביום אכלך ממנו מות תמות, “for on the day you would eat from it you would surely become mortal.” Man had not been created as a mortal body, but after having sinned he was punished by becoming mortal. G-d’s warning did not mean that he would die immediately. He only had warned him that he would lose his entitlement to infinite life. At some time in the future he would not be able to escape the need to die. This is why he had to be separated from proximity to the tree of life, so that he could not regain the immortality that he had now lost. -Chizkuni

It is not good. The emphatic negative contrasts with the verdict of 1:31 that everything was "very good," this after the creation of male and female. The idea here is that man is recognized to be a social being. Celibacy is undesirable. Genesis Rabba 17.2 expresses this point as follows: "Whoever has no wife exists without goodness, without a helpmate, without joy, without blessing, without atonement. without well-being, without a full life• indeed, such a one reduces the representation of the divine image [on earth]." -Sarna JPS Torah Commentary

this one will be called woman, because from man was this one taken It was learned in the name of R' Meir: The Divine Presence rests between man (ish in Hebrew) and woman (ishah), because the extra letter yod in ish and the extra letter heh in ishah together form God's name. If they are worthy, the Divine Presence is between them and blesses them. If they are not worthy, the Divine Presence removes itself from them (i.e., the letters yod and heh of God's name disappear), and the two remaining letters, ayin and shin remain, forming the word aish "fire" - and a fire consumes them. --Pesikta Zutreta, in Torah Gems

Bonus: Optional. Feminists have problems with the way the Bible describes the creation of woman—from the side of man and as his helper. I frankly don't see any problem with woman's beginnings in Eden. Man is created from dust in a single verse. Woman is fashioned from flesh and bone over the course of six verses. Woman, like man, is created by God. And it is to Cod, rather than man, that woman remains accountable. As the feminist Bible scholar Phyliss Tribble writes:

Man has no part in making woman. He exercises no control over her existence: He is neither participant nor spectator nor consultant at her birth. Like man, woman owes her life solely to God.

Woman's absence from Eden clearly signals its incompleteness to God. The writers of Genesis go out of their way to emphasize the improvement in man's existence after woman's appearance. Woman brings conversation, laughter, and sexuality into Adam's life. With the creation of woman, love enters the world.

So does companionship. It's important to note that the male female relationship is introduced in Genesis under the banner of companionship—before either sexuality or procreation enters the picture. Sexual attraction comes and goes in cycles. But as this episode teaches us, the companionship we offer our mates is the single most enduring gift we bring to an intimate relationship. The more intimate the relationship, the more subtle and profound the companionship. No career, however important it may be, is as crucial to a man's or a woman's well-being as the richness and support found in intimacy. -Rosenblatt, Wrestling with Angels